Designed to establish a causal relationship between childhood victimization and young adults' substance abuse, this study also examined depression's role as mediator in that causal relationship. The study employs child-abuse measures that weigh both the type (sexual, physical) and the persistence of abuse. The study took as its substance-abuse measures the DSM-IV criteria for current alcohol abuse, current marijuana abuse, and current drug abuse. Data from the first 5 waves of the National Youth Survey (NYS) was employed, along with data from its 7th wave, to establish the temporal order needed to determine causal relationship. Childhood physical abuse proved a strong predictor of young adults' current substance abuse, although sexual abuse did not. Depression was shown to mediate the relationship of physical abuse to current alcohol abuse and current drug abuse, but not to current marijuana abuse.

Using data from the Baltimore Police Stress and Domestic Violence study, the authors examined how exposure to stressful events on the job affects law enforcement employees’ physical aggression toward domestic partners, evaluating the role of negative emotions and authoritarian spillover in mediating the impact of such task-related stress. The authors consulted general strain theory and angry aggression theory to explain domestic violence in police families. Significant positive effects on physical aggression toward an intimate partner were found for variables measuring authoritarian spillover and negative emotions. However, these effects were different for different gender and racial groups.

An interview study was conducted among a group of incoming prisoners in a county jail in Ohio during the summers of 1997 and 1998 to assess their current drug treatment needs. “Incoming prisoners” ...

A quasi-longitudinal, retrospective survey was used to examine the relationship of Greek affiliation and intensity of drinking in college. Explanations of higher levels of drinking among Greeks usually revolve around subcultural support, differential association, and reference group behavior. That is, association with pro-drinking students in a drinking subculture increases the members' drinking level. In this study, students' high-schooling drinking patterns were used to partially explain the decision to join Greek groups in order to continue prior drinking habits. Greek affiliation was found to serve as both a facilitating and enhancing factor in collegiate alcohol use.

A secondary dataset, Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001–2003, was employed to examine racial/ethnic differences in access to specialty and non-specialty substance abuse treatment (compared with no access to treatment). The study found that non-Hispanic White Americans were (1) likelier than members of all racial/ethnic minority groups (other than Hispanics) to address substance abuse by accessing care through specialty addiction-treatment facilities, and were (2) also less likely to access substance abuse care through non-specialty facilities. Because non-specialty facilities may have staffs whose professional training does not target treating chronic, bio-psycho-social illness such as substance abuse, our results imply that treatment facilities deemed non-specialty may need to enhance staff training, in order to ensure individuals are properly screened for substance use conditions and are referred for or provided with effective counseling and medications as appropriate.

Guided by Anderson’s theory of the code of the street, this study explored social mechanisms linking individual-level disadvantage factors with the adoption of beliefs grounded in the code of the street and with drug trafficking and gun carrying—the co-occurring behavior shaping violence among young men in urban areas. Secondary data were employed from a sample of male inmates and a sample of male high school students. Data analysis indicated that the social disadvantage factor absent father significantly predicted this co-occurring behavior in the inmate sample, whereas the social disadvantage factor history of expulsion did so in the student sample. In both samples, race and adopting beliefs about gun carrying from the code of the street were significant predictors of drug trafficking and gun carrying. The results do not suggest that such code-based beliefs’ impact on drug trafficking and gun carrying differs by race. Implications for social policy are discussed.